Acid reflux, which is also termed as gastroesophageal reflux, is one of the most frequent problems among infants. Babies with acid reflux often suffer from a range of conditions, from a mild degree to a severe one, such as recurrent spitting up, abdominal pain, and night waking.

This discussion would be more comprehensive with the understanding of the physiological or the mechanical aspect of the condition. The body has a band of muscle in a circular structure that is called the lower esophageal sphincter. This muscle detaches the esophagus from the stomach. When food comes into the stomach, it closes so as to prevent the stomach acids and contents from backing up into the esophagus or regurgitating. But in the case of some babies, the lower esophageal sphincter has grown immature. As such, the partially digested food and digestive acids are allowed to be refluxed. This condition causes irritation in the esophagus lining which results to inflammation that is also commonly called as heartburn.

Acid reflux among babies usually develops when they are between two to four weeks old. Doctors usually prescribe medicines that minimize the production of digestive acids. Within six to nine months, the acid reflux starts to naturally subside. At this time period, the babies spend most of their time in an upright position. This is to apply the law of gravity on the food taken in; that is, the food stays down more naturally and reduces possible regurgitation.

The following are helpful pointers on feeding and positioning of babies to lessen acid reflux:

Prepare smaller feedings recurrently. It makes sense to feed your baby more than usual but less than the accustomed. If lesser volume of milk goes into the stomach, the digestion will be faster and there will be fewer amounts of contents available for regurgitation.

Maintain the baby in an upright position after feeding. As discussed earlier, gravity helps to keep the digestive contents down. Position your baby seated in your lap while his head rests on your chest. Keep this position for at least half an hour after feeding.

Breastfeeding helps a lot. Breast milk is well-known to have many advantages over other commercial formula, mainly for babies with acid reflux. Breast milk can be digested faster, which of course lessens spitting up, and it has special enzymes that assists digestion. In addition to that, breast milk does not trigger allergy to babies compared to other milks available in the market. But for those who are formula-feeding, it is advisable to use milk with a hypoallergenic formula as advised by a doctor. Aside from having higher tolerance with sensitive intestines, hypoallergenic milk can also be digested faster by the stomach so as to minimize refluxes.

Set your baby in a comfortable position when asleep. Since when a baby lies flat when sleeping, gravity cannot help in keeping the food down in this set-up. As a result, a baby with acid reflux often has to endure a sore night waking. If a baby can sleep soundly, then there will be no need to call for a change in his habit. But some babies become restless, which can be noted by abdominal pain, acid breath, and wet burps. In this case, it is recommended to elevate the baby’s crib to about 30 degrees. This will be enough to reduce the regurgitation. You may also try to train him to sleep on his left side. It is in this position where the inlet of the stomach is higher than the exit. This will also help to keep the food down.

Summary:

So you want to be a snowboarder? Here's how to get started on a budget. Avoid paying high prices for your snowboard by knowing what to look for when selecting your second hand snowboard.

Keywords:

choosing a snowboard,duotone snowboards,snow board ratings,used snowboards,secondhand snowboards

Article Body:

If you're looking at getting into snowboarding, going for the second hand option is not a bad way to go. Often you'll get lucky and find a board that hasn't been used much at all. If you know nothing about snowboarding gear and have no friends who are boarders then a quick search on Google will turn up plenty of forums where you can get specific answers.

You will be pleased to hear that with just a little bit of knowledge you will find it easy to select the right board for you. Try to decide what type of boarding you will be doing. Do you want to be out all day enjoying some all-mountain boarding or are you into speed? Will you mostly be practicing in your local snow park?

When you are choosing a used snowboard check the sidewall and sandwich layers to make sure the laminate is not splitting apart. Make sure the inserts are in good condition and that the board has a full set. If you can, go for a board with a cap construction because this type don't have a sidewall, the board is stronger and it flexes better.

Another consideration is the effective edge. This is the area of the board which actually touches the snow. For sharper, tighter maneuvers the effective edge should be shorter. The longer the effective edge the more stability the board will have at faster speeds.

Make a point of inspecting the top sheet. Be wary of more obvious cracks or "crazing" which you may find more evident in and around the binding areas. Often these indicators will warn you of problems down the line. You will find that most smaller scratches are not worth worrying about unless the aesthetics are really important to you. This is down to your own judgment really.

Check the flex. Place the board on a level surface and flex the board to see if it still has a springy feel to it. If it feels dead and soft give it a miss. Also be vigilant for core shots - these occur when the P-Tex material is badly damaged, gouged or chipped. The damage penetrates to the core of the board, hence the name.

The bindings should not deteriorate as quickly as other parts of the board. You can gauge their condition with a quick manual inspection. You will be able to easily tell if the bindings are past their "use by" date.

You may be surprised to know that these days snowboards are designed with different specifications for men and women. You should be aware of this when choosing your second hand snowboard. Women tend to be a slighter build overall and on average are shorter than men, so most women will be looking for a smaller, lighter board. The taller female will want a slightly wider board but not too much longer.

You can quite easily pick up used snowboarding gear online at places like eBay and other more specialist snowboarding suppliers. However, your best bet if you can is to actually go to a shop and touch the product. Plenty of snowboarding retailers will have used equipment either on show or out the back. Just ask the proprietors, they are usually more than happy to help.

Summary:

When trekking off into the wilderness for hunting, fishing, camping, hiking or whatever, the last thing you might think of is communications. It should be the first thing.

Keywords:

Article Body:

For Hunting, fishing, hiking, boating or cycling in all kinds of weather

Communication in the wilderness is a matter of survival, as well as convenience. Before even leaving home, communications must begin. In fact, our first two communications tips do not even require equipment or gadgets.

"Make sure that somebody knows when you leave, when you expect to return (or get to your destination)," advises Chad Brown, owner of Farm & Field fishing and hunting equipment auctions, a website geared to hunting, fishing and farming. "Provide as much information about your route as possible.

Things can happen. Rocks can fall on your head while hiking. Boats can tip over while fishing. Firearms can malfunction while hunting. Somebody needs to know that you are late in arriving...and where to send search parties to go hunting for you. In fact, this is the same advice I used to give drivers in winter weather when I was spokesperson for CAA Ontario.

The second tip is to never head into the wilderness alone. Just as one should never go swimming without a swimming buddy, nor should one go long-distance cycling or hiking, nor hunting, camping or fishing in a remote area without a buddy.

My wife's uncle took the business end of large falling branch on his skull while out in the forest, knocking him unconscious and cracking his skull down the middle. Eventually his skull will heal, but only because he had companions to get him into town. Otherwise, he might still not be found.

Here is another report, this one from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation about a fall from a tree stand: "The subject had no communications equipment with him. No phone or radio. If the subject had left word of where he would be and approximate hour of return, a response may have been quicker. Cause of Death: The subject suffered a broken shoulder, multiple broken ribs on one side, a punctured lung, and a punctured spleen."

This is hunting equipment?

Assuming you are still conscious, it helps to have some communications equipment while out hunting, fishing or camping. Of course, there is the ever popular cell phone, which brings instant communications to almost everywhere in the world. Except maybe your wilderness trek.

But there are many places where cell phone range covers your fishing lake or hunting woods. The best part about a cell phone is that, even in the wilderness, you can have utterly normal conversations with pretty well anybody.

"Yes, nice weather we are having lately. OK, darling, on my way back into town I'll pick up some milk and peanut butter and...wait! Was that a whitetail? Gotta go." Click.

Not only that, with a cell phone you can even catch up on your email while crouching in your tent or scaling a cliff, with an email to phone service.

A two-way radio is a much surer piece of equipment, because it does not depend on the cellular phone network to connect. The downside is that you get to speak to a much narrower range of people: other two-way radio owners.

"Hi there, Big Bear, do you read me? Can you get a-hold of my wife to see if I have to pick up milk and peanut butter on my way back into town? Do you copy? Oh yeah, you got the weather forecast there, by any chance?"

Before you leave on any outdoors trip, it is wise to check the weather forecast. But the weather forecast can change quickly, so a cell phone or radio serves another purpose.

"Whaddaya mean thunderstorms and hail?!? I just got here, darling, I don't want to come home just yet. Oh...alright..."

Of course, you could just have someone email the weather forecast to you on your cell phone.

Chad Brown also suggests another piece of hunting equipment - keeping a very loud whistle hanging from your neck. If you are trapped under a tree, pinned down by a boulder, or wrestling a grizzly bear, you might not have the reach or the attention span to dial a number. If anybody is within earshot, they will come running...if not to help you, at least to capture the scene for America's Funniest Home Videos.

Our final tip might seem obvious, but make sure you know where to call. Have the emergency number taped to the back of the cell phone (ignore your wife's idea of tattooing it to your forehead; where would you find a mirror in the middle of a ravine?) and make sure you know what frequency to call for help on the two-way radio.

There you have it. You are prepared to go out into the wild and communicate. Make sure to prepare, to have the right hunting equipment or fishing gear for communicating, and know how to use them in an emergency.

And if the animals don't understand what you are trying to communicate to them, you might not be any worse off than in the city.

Summary:

For those of us who write and submit articles to various content directories, we do so primarily for one reason:To get the link back to our site.However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all links are equal in the eyes of the major search engines.How your links “appear” to the search engines

Keywords:

article writing

Article Body:

For those of us who write and submit articles to various content directories, we do so primarily for one reason:To get the link back to our site.However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all links are equal in the eyes of the major search engines.How your links “appear” to the search engines can be nearly as significant as the number of links that actually point to your site.

As you cultivate links to your site, the goal is to have as natural a link structure as possible.What this means is that search engines like to see links presented in a manner that does not appear to be phony, or an effort to fool the search engines into thinking your site is more popular than it actually is.In our efforts to do this, it is important to keep in mind the following:

First, your incoming links should increase gradually.Search engines see a sudden jump in links as artificial and not an indication of your site’s popularity.When you submit your articles to an article directory, your links generally increase gradually as they are picked up over time and published on web sites and archived ezines.

Second, whenever possible, your incoming links should not be reciprocal.Many of you are now saying, “easier said than done”.Perhaps, but submitting articles to article directories is a great way to build these types of links.

Search engines view sites that rely heavily on reciprocal links as not necessarily containing sought-after content that others want to voluntarily link to.That is, pure link reciprocity implies that the only purpose of the link is to build links and has nothing to do with the quality of the content on the web site.

Third, it’s very important to be consistent in how the link to your site is published.The following example will illustrate this point:

The following URL’s all point to the same page, of course.However, as far as the major search engines are concerned, they are all different:

http://articlelists.com

http://articlelists.com/

http://articlelists.com/index.html

http://www.articlelists.com

http://www.articlelists.com/

http://www.articlelists.com/index.html

Therefore, if your incoming links vary as listed above, your page rank is being watered down by up to a factor of six.So if you are not already doing it, be sure to be consistent in how you have your incoming links published.

This last item discussed here concerns anchor text.Anchor text is the actual text that appears for a particular hyperlink, and is perhaps one of the most important issues to consider when building your incoming link structure. For example, in the following link, Free Article Directory, the words “Free Article Directory” constitute the anchor text.However, when you place your cursor over the link you will see the destination site, www.ArticleLists.com, displayed in the status bar.

There are two important rules of thumb to remember about your anchor text.The first is that your anchor text should vary.That is, the incoming links to your site should not all have the same anchor text. This creates a more natural appearance to the search engines and will help in your rankings.The second rule is to place your keywords into your anchor text whenever possible.The reason this is important is because search engines view the anchor text as an indication of the topic of your webpage. So you get a two-for-one effect:You not only get the desired inbound link, but you also create a more natural-looking incoming link structure which will be viewed more favorably by the search engines.Of course, you would first want to do some keyword research to determine the popularity and importance of various keywords relating to your web site, and then use the ones for which you are trying to rank well.

When you begin to view your inbound link structure from the perspective of the search engines, you begin to see the logic of what needs to be done to rank well.For the search engines, it’s all about content and delivering the most relevant web pages possible for a given search term.

Creating an inbound link structure that appears more natural, or voluntary, will indicate to the search engines that your content is indeed something that their users would find useful.Assuming your site publishes quality content, you have, in a sense, helped the search engine do their job; and in the process you’ve gone a long way in making your web site more visible on the Internet.

Paintball is a war game. Firepower and manpower do matter. Firepower is the ability of a paintball gun to inflict a lot of paint on your opponents and the ammunition it can carry. However firepower is useless in the wrong hands. It is still manpower that will win teams their games.

Manpower is the ability of a player not to only play harder but to also play smarter in the field. This article tackles about stealth and how it can win games for you.

Stealth is the ability to blend with your surroundings. Using different techniques to achieve this, stealth will usually indicate who the “newbie” is in a paintball environment.

Stealth is about moving the right way. When you have to make a quick dash, it is best to just stick to paths where there are no twigs. Twigs are the worst things to step on as they will snap, break, and make noise. It is recommended that you take your time (when you still have it) and move slowly when going through a cluttered area.

Stealth is best accomplished when using the proper equipment. Shoes and clothing will help tremendously in minimizing the sound you create when moving. Shoes with soft soles are recommended as they make less noise than army combat boots because they have a natural sound absorption property that helps limit the sounds made while stepping.

Soft clothing will also be an advantage as coarse fabrics will create a lot of noise when brushing against branches and the foliage. It is great for crawling quietly to go to a desired place with a minimal amount of noise created.

Other things must also fit snug or tightly on your body. This includes harnesses and holsters. You should also avoid putting anything in the leg area since walking and running will cause it to make noise - this includes your reloads and ammunition.

There are also several techniques such as using colors that match the foliage of the battlefield: this will hide you and makes you virtually unseen (when not moving) by your enemies.

When you have to move, it is recommended that you learn how to crawl the proper way (and with the ability to still fire when needed).

Stealth takes a lot of time to learn properly. Even experienced players will make mistakes and with these mistakes they learn how not to do it!